Dylan felt the chains abruptly loosen, and his body collapsed like a rag doll. Before he could hit the ground, the creature grabbed him by the arm, its thick claws piercing his flesh. The pain tore a raw scream from his throat, instantly muffled by a menacing growl.
"Silence, or I'll carry you in pieces," the monster snarled, dragging him toward a dark passage.
The narrow corridor oozed with a viscous substance, a sickly green glow pulsing from the walls. Dylan blinked, realizing the light came from bioluminescent mushrooms, their gills throbbing like diseased hearts. The air was thick with a sickly-sweet stench — a blend of rotting honey and decaying flesh. With each step, his boots crushed tiny bones — children's bones, he realized with a gag.
They passed niches carved into the rock, each housing a translucent egg the size of a man. Inside, humanoid shapes writhed in black amniotic fluid. One of them pressed a deformed hand against the membrane, revealing fused fingers and a single eyelid.
"The Matriarch's offspring," the creature purred, stroking an egg with unsettling tenderness. "You will improve the bloodline. Too many degenerate males this cycle."
Dylan gritted his teeth, his free hand furtively exploring his belt. His combat knife was gone, but his fingers found a shard of metal lodged in his buckle — a piece of shrapnel he'd picked up during a bombing. He gripped it, the jagged edge slicing into his palm.
The tunnel opened into a massive cavern. At its center, coiled in a nest of dried tendons and intertwined carcasses, the Matriarch loomed. Her body pulsed like a giant jellyfish, a mountain of pearly flesh streaked with blue veins. Dozens of stalk-like eyes jutted from her torso, each eyeball swiveling independently toward Dylan. Her mouth — a vertical slit stretching from pelvis to sternum — parted to reveal spiraling rows of teeth.
"Come closer." Her voice was a chorus of glacial whispers, as if a thousand dying souls spoke in unison.
The creature threw Dylan at the Matriarch's feet. He rolled over shards of bone, the metal shard still clenched in his bleeding fist. A tentacle wrapped around his leg, the slimy skin burning like acid.
"Youthful… strong… resilient…" The tentacles prodded his ribs, lingering on his war scars. "Perfect to receive the Seed."
The Matriarch arched her grotesque body, her gaping mouth revealing a pulsating womb where blind larvae squirmed. One of them detached — a translucent worm armed with scythe-like mandibles.
Dylan raised his makeshift blade, ready to slit his throat rather than endure this fate. But a deep rumble shook the cavern. The tentacles recoiled with a high-pitched screech. Above, a crack split the ceiling, pouring down an avalanche of rock and… daylight.
A shrill scream pierced the air as the Matriarch shrank back from the blinding light. Her tentacles flailed wildly, retreating like scorched snakes. One of the embryonic creatures in a nearby egg began to convulse, its translucent skin blistering under the sudden onslaught of sunlight.
Dylan didn't hesitate. Taking advantage of the chaos, he plunged his shard of metal into the tentacle coiling his leg. The gelatinous membrane burst in a spray of black fluid. A shriek echoed — half-human, half-insect — reverberating through the cavern.
He rolled aside, grabbing a sharp bone from the debris, and pushed himself to his feet. The ground trembled under the repeated shocks of falling rocks. Another quake sent an entire section of the ceiling crashing down, crushing several incubation pods. Scalding vapor erupted from the wreckage, mixed with the nascent cries of aborted creatures.
Through the confusion, Dylan spotted a figure perched at the edge of the fissure above. For a second, he thought he was hallucinating.
"Dylan! Move your ass!"
The voice shot through him like a bullet. He squinted through the dust and light to make out a woman in tactical armor, a climbing rope coiled around her harness. A rifle hung from her shoulder, the barrel still smoking.
"Maggie?" he croaked, disbelief etched in his voice.
"No time for reunions, climb!"
Dylan glanced back at the Matriarch. She writhed in uncontrollable spasms, her dozens of eyes oozing black fluid under the harsh light. Her tentacles curled inwards like a flower wilting at high speed. But something deep in her chest was pulsing violently — a dark, trembling mass, like a diseased heart about to burst.
A shiver ran down his spine.
"She's gonna…"
He didn't have time to finish. An invisible shockwave exploded from the Matriarch's body, blasting the cavern with a telepathic scream so powerful it made his skull vibrate.
Then her flesh cracked.
And something burst out.
A figure, taller, more skeletal, with ghostly white bones, emerged from the Matriarch's ruptured carcass. Its limbs unfolded with a sickening crack. Three hollow eye sockets glowed with spectral light as they locked onto Dylan.
He didn't wait to see what came next.
"MAGGIE, GO!"
He sprinted toward the rope she had thrown down, his bloodied fingers latching onto it with desperate urgency. Behind him, the sickening sounds of flesh turning inside out accompanied the first steps of the newborn horror.
Dylan climbed.
Above, Maggie pulled the detonator.
The explosion swallowed the cavern.
---
The blast slammed Dylan against the rocky wall, knocking the wind from his lungs. The rope burned his palms, but he clenched his teeth, blinded by the debris of stone and vaporized flesh. Below, the spectral creature howled — a sound so unnatural it made his ears bleed.
"Unlock your damn legs!" Maggie shouted, hauling him up like a flailing fish.
He collapsed onto a narrow ledge, gasping for breath, the stench of gunpowder and rot filling his lungs. Maggie was already pulling out a flare gun, aiming at a pillar of stalactites hanging over the chasm. The shot cracked the air, and the ceiling collapsed in a deadly cascade, sealing the entrance to hell.
But the ground kept shaking.
"What the hell were those things?" Dylan spat blood, every breath stabbing his ribs like broken glass.
"I don't know! Just help me stay alive!"
She grabbed his harness, dragging him through a narrow tunnel. The walls oozed with a slimy, bioluminescent substance. Behind them, the metallic scraping of claws echoed — like nails on titanium.
"How… did you… find me?"
"Your biometric chip. I've been tracking your signal for two days. You looked like minced meat on the radar."
Two days. Dylan's mind flashed with images of the suspended bodies, the bites… His stomach lurched. Maggie glanced at him, her brown eyes sunken with cold fury. He recognized her by the piercing on her brow and her black-lacquered lips — a gothic touch clashing with her military gear.
A roar ripped through the tunnel. The air filled with the stench of overheated metal.
"Run!" Maggie shouted, shoving Dylan ahead of her.
They sprinted down a slick slope, their gear lights flickering in the gloom.
Suddenly, the wall in front of them exploded.
A creature burst through the cloud of bone dust. Its body had mutated — crystalline spikes jutted from its spine, emitting a high-pitched hum. Maggie fired a burst, but the bullets bounced off as if hitting an invisible shield.
"Tell me I'm dreaming…" Dylan murmured, unable to look away from the monster.
Maggie drew a monomolecular knife and lunged, dodging a tentacle of bone. Dylan tried to stop her — if bullets had done nothing, what could a knife achieve?
"Maggie, stop!" he shouted, but she was already on the creature, blade first.
The monster reacted with inhuman speed. A bony tentacle sliced through the air, cutting a stalactite clean before slashing Maggie's shoulder. She rolled on the ground, her arm burning, but managed to drive her weapon into a gap between two chitinous plates.
A metallic crackling rose from the wound. The creature tensed, the crystals on its back pulsing with a pale glow. Maggie jumped back, expecting a counterattack. The monster froze, its limbs twitching in sharp spasms. A jet of dark vapor hissed from the wound.
"Did the knife work?" Dylan asked in disbelief.
Maggie grimaced, clutching her wound. "It cut something… but not enough."
As if to confirm her words, the creature let out a piercing shriek. Its crystalline growths turned blood-red. With a sickening crack, its body stretched — bones twisting, flesh distorting — transforming into a grotesque abomination.
"Shit," Dylan cursed, yanking Maggie back by her harness. "We're getting out of here!"
The beast reared up, its arms tripling in length. Its eyes burned with ancient hatred. In one fluid motion, it swung its limbs down like giant scythes.
Dylan moved on instinct. He shoved Maggie out of reach. The ground exploded where she had been standing a second earlier, shards of rock shredding her legs.
"Dylan, you idiot!" She staggered to her feet, pulling a magnetic grenade from her vest. "Catch this, you son of a bitch!"
The explosive clamped onto the chitinous torso with a metallic snap.
A blinding flash filled the tunnel. The shockwave hurled the creature against the wall, fragments of its carapace shattering in all directions. Its howl of pain made the walls tremble.
"Move it!" Dylan roared.
They darted into a side tunnel, stumbling over debris. The furious roars echoed louder than ever behind them. Dylan knew it — they'd only bought themselves time.
The horror would catch up to them.